Quelab is holding a fundraiser with Color Wheel Toys! Tuesday November 6 from 10 AM to 6 PM. Note this is at Color Wheel Toys (3418 Central SE), NOT at Quelab! Be sure to mention “Quelab” at the checkout counter (or print out a flyer and bring it with you to show when you checkout) and a portion of your purchase will benefit Quelab!

Personally I’m really excited for this fundraiser because I visited Color Wheel several times during their pop up shop last year. They specialize in “toys that require imagination” and I think it’s a store that many makers would enjoy. I found some great science and STEM/STEAM gifts for kids and adults on my list, plus some extra gifts that were just a dollar or two “in case”, and — let’s be honest here — some nifty stuff for myself too. I’d always wanted one of those marble run toys, and there’s a nice selection of glow in the dark stuff. I bought a pile of their combo pen/stylus/screwdriver/ruler/level things for myself and gifts too.

There’s one other thing I rather liked about this store that I didn’t even realize until I overheard another shopper talking with the owner. The toys aren’t divided up by gender, which is particularly nice if you are shopping for yourself — because why should I have to decide if I want girls LEGO or boys LEGO? At Color Wheel Toys there’s just one LEGO section AND it has a bulk bin where you can pick out exactly what you want.

While Color Wheel Toys will be open through the end of December, remember it’s ONLY on Tuesday November 6, 10am-6pm that you can help out Quelab while you shop — AND you need to mention Quelab at the checkout counter or show them a flyer. (Full page flyers here, 4 per page here — give some to friends!)

Quelab is a Nonprofit organization started as a entirely self-funded and membership-driven organization, staffed by a group of passionate volunteers who strongly believe that makerspaces can help make the world a better place. Quelab is a 501(c)3 non-profit that has been serving Albuquerque’s maker community since 2010 with a 11,000 square foot workshop. To find out more, visit quelab.net, email us at info@quelab.net, or call the Quelab message line at (505) 750-4522

Sunday October 7 is our once a month Hacknight! Starting at 5 pm is a social hour and potluck where you can get to know Quelab members, 6 pm a community planning meeting, and 7 pm we have Hacknight (our version of an “open house”) — come to any or all!

Our once a month Hacknight is a great place to learn more about Quelab. If you are thinking of joining Quelab, or just curious to find out more, this is the time to come and get a feel for our community of makers, tour our 11,000 square foot facility, check out the equipment in detail (everything from a wood shop to laser cutter to fiber arts to welding to darkroom to 3d printer, and too many more to list). A few members will be bringing some projects to check out and hands on maker stuff to share!

Those under 18 are welcome, but must be accompanied by an adult. Most of our equipment is “kid unfriendly” so plan to supervise any younger children closely, though we do sometimes have a child friendly activity or two.

Ready to join Quelab and can’t make Hacknight? Good news, attending Hacknight isn’t required to become a member, all you have to do is pay your membership fees and attend an orientation and you too can be a part of Quelab! Orientation is generally the second Sunday of the month, but often there are other orientation sessions as well — you do need to register in advance for orientation, do that here: https://quelab.net/membership/

If you can’t make this one, plan for next month — Quelab holds a Hacknight open house on the first Sunday of each month.

If YOU have an idea for something YOU are interested bringing to Hacknight — a presentation, a project, a maker activity to share — let us know!

Long ago in a space far, far away, the Quelab crew had a means of amusement: Asteroids.

A donation from Adric, the Asteroids cabinet has seen its fair share of hands across its buttons: life at, presumably, an arcade and then later at Southwest Cyberport, it was brought to Quelab after it just didn’t have any more go in it. Never one to give up, we replaced the required parts, added a high score save kit, and pounded out more hours on it, racking up high scores in the 15,000 range. Some time later, we moved, and the cabinet stayed dormant: Nobody really wanted to play it much anymore. The buttons had been abused and left in a sorried state, dust had crept in, and the final straw came when a known issue with contact corrosion had made the board unable to boot again.

That is, until someone decided to fix it. Morgan G. (myself) and Ben L (of Black Lodge Research in Redmond, WA) decided to dig in and, over a weekend, get the thing up and going properly. Some preliminary work had gone into getting it working again.

So, what needed to happen? Just some cleanup, love, and a bit of attention. New fuses, cleaned contacts, and lots of reading schematics later made it clear what the problem was, and some new features we could add in for fun, and a beautiful, well-loved cabinet was given new life.

We left a note to anyone who opens the cabinet up in the future, as well as a copy of the manual, reproduced in true Atari form, plus some spare parts.

A rebuilt power supply: 12VDC and lots of fuses make up the new AC-DC rectifier that makes the cabinet hum.

40 years of wear on T-Molding vs. clean, fresh stuff. It’s the little details that make all the difference!

Years of play have left these Asteroids buttons pitted and worse for wear.

T-Molding needs to be carefully shaped around corners, as seen here.

You have to hammer it in gently!

The bottom of the Asteroids cabinet hides extra t-molding and clean, new feets!

The cabinet, ready to rock.

new, shiny buttons adorn the cleaned up control panel of our Asteroids cabinet.

The marquee shines and glistens after an LED backlight uses less than a tenth of the energy of its florecent ancestor.

Only got one hand? Get a friend to play co-op on Asteroids for a heckin’ good time.

The root cause of the cabinet not working is a well-documented flaw in power supplies that use a sense line: the sense line needs to be really good in order for the whole thing to work, and if it isn’t, there’s a good chance the PSU will just cause problems. In an ideal world, they’re self-regulating; From an EDN article on the topic:

The remote sense function automatically increases the output voltage at the output terminals of the supply to compensate for any unwanted voltage drop in the output cables with heavy load currents. Likewise, the remote sense function decreases the output voltage of the supply when the required load current is reduced. In some applications, the power supply’s output needs to be adjusted by the user to voltage higher than its nominal (e.g. 5V nominal, adjusted to 5.5V). Always adjust the power supply’s output while measuring the voltage at the load.

The EDN article concludes saying these are only really useful in extremely high load environments (read: not the environment that Atari had been building for) and should be avoided in newer designs. Perfectly reasonable in Atari’s days, but we’ve learned new things about how the world works. It’s bad enough that bypass hardware exists for these since a bad sense line can cause insane voltages (40-80V!) when they go bad.

Eric Lee was very much a core of our community at Quelab. Please join us as we remember him in a Celebration of Life on Tuesday May 29, 6 pm. Held at Quelab, 680 Haines Ave NW, Albuquerque. Everyone who knew and cared for Mr. Lee is welcome to attend and share their stories and memories.

It is with heavy hearts that we announce that a community member has left us. Eric Lee, a man of many talents, was found deceased in his home on Friday, May 11, 2018 after members of his community and coworkers became concerned for him.

Eric was a pillar of Quelab’s community. As a master machinist, he took the time to teach anyone who asked how to use the tools which he had mastered in a safe manner, displaying his care and meticulous nature and ingraining it in those he taught. Eric explored the world through intense, deep conversations with members of the community on every topic, from his expertise in physics to conversations about culture and politics. Eric was, and will forever be remembered as an essential member in the construction and development of Quelab’s dedicated community of makers, as a tireless and selfless teacher, collaborator, and sounding board for ideas. Eric ahbored the idea that a member of his community should pay for his knowledge, instead asking only to learn something new in return at some distant point in the future.

In his professional life, Eric had many accomplishments—too many to list without missing at least half—which benefitted the world. Eric in his work at Stanford University in California and later the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque has advanced the state of the art in multiple physics disciplines, been granted innumerable patents, and been on the edge of scientific advancement for many years. Without him, our understanding of dark matter, particle physics and various other disciplines may not be where they are today. Often lauded for his talents in many fields by his cohorts, the world owes a thank you to Eric for his many years of dedicated research, ingenuity and intense passion for his work.

In his personal life, he was an avid maker of many things. Any opportunity to design and engineer a project became a means to learn a new skill, refine one he had, or a chance to teach and collaborate with another member of his community. Eric found joy in sharing what he had made as well as encouraging others to learn, share, and explore through his many hours of time at Maker Faire, in the Quelab metal shop, and numerous events which hosted Quelab in some capacity. His enduring enthusiasm brought smiles and joy to others through his love of many topics and fields.

He will be missed, but his legacy will endure through his selfless volunteering and the passion that he encouraged us to all continue.

Quelab was approached last month to open some outreach talks with a representative of the local Air Force Research Laboratory(AFRL) and their Maker Hub, (A Makerspace on Kirtland Air Force Base). After talks and a tour of our space, we arranged for a small group tour to be escorted onto the base and see some of the AFRL’s space tech lab space, and then through the Maker Hub, which is a very nicely outfitted small Makerspace right in Western KAFB, which turns out to be open and free for people with base access. (details in a link below)

Opening just last year (2017) they already have an impressive start. The Maker Hub is in a small nondescript brown building on the west end of the base near the tarmac/runways. Inside are nearly a dozen 3d printers, a combination fiber and CO2 Epilog laser cutter, a small CNC, small machine shop, work benches, electronics lab, 2d large format printing, and even a fancy 2 armed red robot torso. So If you are on base much, please give them a look. I know they are looking to expand into a bigger space, which I think will be good for them, as it feels a bit cramped. But at this point I think its utilized low enough (much like we were for the first few years) that the size is not too constraining yet. (not until you have a half dozen people working on big projects)

Quelab since its beginning we have always been interested in meeting with, collaborations and exchanges with other local and world, Makerspaces and Makers and those who don’t know yet they can be makers!

Here is the list of nominees (in alpha order by first name) for the Board of Directors Election taking place this weekend, 2-18-18, 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.:

Charel Morris

Craig “Zoot” Goldsmith

Gonner Menning

Jack Gilster

Jesse Trujillo

John “JT” Benedetto

Rebecca Snyder

Electronic voting will start Thursday. All active members will receive their ballot via email that day. All voting will be electronic, there will be no paper ballots this year. If you do not want to vote ahead of time, you are welcome to come to the Election Meeting party this Sunday afternoon, and vote at Quelab; there will be food provided! You will need to have access to your email to get to your voting email from the OPAVOTE system to use your specific voter setup (each one is unique).

A REMINDER: The Quelab by-laws state we MUST reach quorum for voter turnout, which is why we have electronic voting, encourage voting ahead of time, and ask that ALL vote in the Board of Directors’ Election. You are even free to submit a blank ballot, and NOT vote for ANYONE; that will still count towards quorum!

Vote Ranking – When voting, everyone will be asked to rank all of the candidates that they want to vote for; they can rank as many candidates as they want. Unless they are voting for only one candidate, the votes must be ranked. The votes will be counted using a single transferable vote system.

This shorter “extra” video is easier to understand concerning the voting system we are using:

Yesterday, for the third year, Quelab participated in the Rio Rancho Library’s Star Wars Fest. We were able to show off various disciplines that are offered at Quelab and let people know about our space. This year was the event’s 6th (or is that Sith?) occurrence.

As in the past, the event was VERY successful, and of course a very fun to be a part of! The three hours passed by quickly and it was over before we realized it.

A HUGE shout out and thank you to John “JT” Benedetto, Morgan Gangwere, Alice and Patrick Shriver, Darrel Knutson, Eric Lee and Josh Pedersen for volunteering their time and talents in helping Quelab have a presence at this event. A thank you as well goes out to Craig “Zoot” Goldsmith for coming to the event and taking these pictures.

Quelab had its’ (now becoming) standard Star Wars exhibit set up with 3D Printing, prop style lightsabers, combat lightsabers, and various forms of laser cut artwork. However, this year we did something different. Since this event has been so good to us in the past, in terms of new memberships as well as cash and equipment donations, Quelab gave back to the event. Simple and easy X-Wing and TIE Fighter kits (small ones, about 11-13 pieces) were cut on the laser cutter, bagged up, and given to the library. These proved to be VERY popular, as many of the participants came to the Quelab tables and thanked us for making cutting these as they proudly showed off their assembled kits.

Our presence at this event is very much noted and appreciated by not only the public, but especially the staff of the Loma Colorado branch of the Rio Rancho Library. Event organizer, Librarian Jenna Wells, expressed her appreciation many times during the event, starting with when we walked in the door. Many other staff members stopped me as I took a moment to walk around, to say thank you and how much they appreciated our presence. The Library Director also came over to our tables to personally thank us.

As the event was wrapping up, I had a chance to walk around. I heard two different groups of librarians comment about us – “Those Quelab people are incredible!” and “That Quelab display was amazing”. We have become a staple at this event, and as such, we have already been asked to come be a part of it again next year!

It would be nice to grow in our presence, and add more examples of what we do. One in particular is a Star Wars themed corn hole game. This could show off woodworking, electronics (if we want to get really fancy), large format printing, laser cutting and fabric arts! So, if you’d be interested in helping with this becoming a reality, don’t be shy, and let’s talk! If you have any other ideas for a Stars Was related exhibit or activity, please share them as well!

With all of the interest generated, it would not be surprising to see an influx of people visiting Quelab during the next few public nights! If you see some new/unknown people, stop and say “Hi” and welcome them to our space. Remember, we were all new and walked in the front door as strangers once…

Thank you again to the participants, as well as everybody else who has taken the time to read this.

The Quelab Board Of Directors Election will be held on Sunday February 18, 2018. Of the seven person Board of Directors, there are four directors finishing out their two year terms, so you will be voting to elect four Directors. The election party will be held at Quelab, starting at 5:00 p.m. and running until 8:00 p.m. or later, if we don’t reach the required voter turnout (per the By-laws, a quorum of voters is required, that is, 52% turnout.) Like last year, we will be providing food, and hope to have Quelab members come out to socialize & enjoy the party. And yes, this timeframe extends into the regularly scheduled 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Hacknight.

Election Process & Voting

The Election will be handled by Josh Pedersen & Celeste Nichols-Gangwere, with assists from other volunteers. We plan to again utilize OpaVote for electronic voting. There will be no paper ballots. Voting will start earlier that week, perhaps Wednesday (exact date still to be set).

Mandatory

NOTE: Per Quelab’s By-Laws, the Election “meeting” is mandatory for all Quelab members, and all members should vote for their choice(s) for Board of Directors (even if that vote is “none of the above”). Fortunately, voting electronically counts as “attendance”. Early electronic voting simplifies things for everyone, and we encourage as many people to vote early as possible. The election team still wants to see as many Quelab members as possible at the party. Come to Quelab & have some fun with us!